


the world from the side of the moon

by townpariah



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor (Movies) RPF, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anachronisms ahoy, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Class Differences, Dirty Talk, Hiddlesworth, M/M, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:22:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2196828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/townpariah/pseuds/townpariah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atonement AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. tom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [umakoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/umakoo/gifts).



> probably this contains a heap load of typos but it gave me so much grief to write and reread this so i hardly checked. i don't usually do period fic because i struggle so hard with dialogue and anachronisms, but i hope this fic is readable and not _purple-prosy._ it probably is but whatever, it's already here!
> 
> i love the cinematography in _atonement_ and most scenes in the fic are inspired by certain scenes in the film. i didn't change the letter (just tweaked it a bit) because i love how succinct it is and i didn't think i could do it justice if i were to rewrite it. this for [nora](http://umakoo.tumblr.com/), after x years of me promising period fic though lol this was just an excuse to write some class difference fic? idk. ALSO: SEX! *disappears*
> 
>  
> 
>  

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s been well over a week since Tom has returned from university and already he resents being home. The inactivity has driven him up the wall.

Boredom has always been his enemy and the thought of spending the rest of the summer with his family – six weeks of monotonous interchangeable days hardly distinguishable from each other – fills him with a creeping panic.

He’d come home expecting a grand welcome, open arms and an elaborate dinner, but his father had remained in town to manage the family business even after Tom’s return, while his mother had taken to locking herself in her room, smoking and drinking herself to a quick death. His sisters had both developed lives of their own, it seemed, while he’d been away, no longer the same little girls he would sing and read to sleep.

They were outside all the time, swimming, or else holed up in their own rooms getting up to who knew what. Hardly anyone cared that he was back, that instead of frittering his time away in pubs in the city he’d opted to come home. He felt even more alone than when he’d first left for university two years ago. It made him irritable, this disregard for his presence. His return had not warranted fanfare, and he felt hurt, betrayed.

And the countryside heat: it makes him restless to the point of delirium, prone to wandering the sprawling farmland that surrounded their home. He longs for the wide familiar streets of London, for the smell of baking bread and hot tea that, every morning, drifted from the cafés that lined the street below his one-bedroom flat. He misses his books, his rickety bed, the old dry leaf smell that permeated the university library; he misses the soirees that filled up his evenings and sometimes spilled into his mornings and found him staggering back to his flat, rightly pissed and giddy.

Instead he had his family’s indifference, the squalor and unmistakable stink of his unaired bedroom: open books in forgotten piles on the floor and half-smoked cigarettes still smoldering in the biscuit tin he used for an ashtray, the endless repeating pattern of his wallpaper, giving him a migraine. The dressing gown he’d draped across the back of his reading chair looked pale and translucent in the sunlight, like a spectre from one of Shakespeare’s plays.

The air was muggy there, in his room, thick almost like smoke and just as suffocating, but in a strange way he relished the discomfort. It allowed him to redirect his irritation elsewhere and forget, for a moment, the real reason he’d come home.

Tom would never admit it, not without a guilty conscience. He’d come home for purely selfish reasons, not out of a sense of familial duty, or because he was summoned by a strange pang, a longing for home. No, what had brought him home, if he were truly honest with himself, was his desire to see Chris, the housekeeper’s boy, who’d occupied his thoughts while they’d both been at Cambridge, and who’d returned just three days ahead of him without giving him notice.

In Cambridge, Chris had kept himself aloof, distant to the point of unfriendliness even though they’d known each other since they were children. They ran in different circles, two planets in the same orbit, never crossing paths though Tom had tried a few times to approach him only to be overcome by nerves at the last minute and flee.

Tom had seen him a few times in the library, quiet in his solitude, or lingering in the corner street under the awning of his favourite bookstore, just right across Tom’s flat, waiting out the rain – always so handsome, always with his face shuttered and unreadable. Tom missed his company, terribly, and hated the people they’d become: Chris hardly ever spoke a word to him, affecting a formality that both irked and hurt Tom. Tom, in turn, had allowed their friendship to dissolve, believing it had passed the point of salvaging. He had done all he could, he thought. Now they were hardly more than strangers.

Tom watches him sometimes from the bedroom window, open just enough to let a sift of air slice through, working the landscape of the vast front lawn, shaping the hedges with his pruning shears, transplanting shrubbery, a wheelbarrow in tow, constantly in motion and lingering just in the periphery of Tom’s sight – the same way that Tom’s watching him now with bleak fascination: squinting against the hazy morning sunlight, one hand resting on the windowsill. He watches as Chris pauses by the fountain and seats himself on the rim of the lower bowl, hunching his shoulders, his elbows bent on his knees and his head ducked down as he takes a break.

Behind him, two stone cherubs struggle under the weight of a basin hoisted over their shoulders, pouring forth an endless stream of murky water.

Chris has grown bigger since Tom has last seen him – wider in the shoulders, his muscles more defined under the blue shirt he’s wearing with what Tom thinks, from his vantage point, are two buttons undone. And he’s tall, grown out of his lankiness, sturdy as marble, his hair neatly swept out of his face.

Chris keeps his head down before suddenly glancing up – in the direction of Tom’s bedroom. Tom whips himself away from the window, stumbling backwards and tripping against a book on the floor. His heart has leapt up to his throat in shock but he rights himself a second later and pads back to the window. A bee beats itself bloody against the windowpane, its plush body tapping the glass rhythmically. But Chris is gone.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Tom has no excuse but his boredom. Less than an hour later, he steps into the shade of the first floor terrace, his bare feet warmed by the crumbling Yorkshire stone. Heat rises off the ground like the smell of freshly cut grass which is what immediately assails him when he breathes in deep, a comfortless dry breeze fingering his cheek. He’s folded his shirt up to his elbows, unbuttoned part of it to his chest. Sweat has glued the material to his back and he can feel dots of perspiration beading his hairline.

There seems to be no escaping the heat, but Tom takes comfort in its pervasive nature; it’s everywhere, like the leathery scent of cow dung, carried by the wind from the field across their home, a piece of his father’s land sold to a local farmer for his cows to graze on, the smell noticeable only because he’d been away for a time.

Tom finds Chris seated on the front steps, his back to him, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette— one of the habits he seems to have picked up from Cambridge, and like the sullen brooding silence another affectation. The Chris Tom had once known never smoked, but neither had he looked at Tom without a modicum of warmth. This man is a stranger.

Tom walks over to him against his better judgment but keeps himself standing on the top step so Chris has no choice but to look up at him. Tom enjoys the leverage, however short-lived, because Chris smirks and turns his gaze forward, shaking his head.

“Enjoying yourself?” Tom asks. He hates the disdain in his voice because he doesn’t really mean it, not where it counts.

Chris smiles humorlessly, sucking a strong puff from his cigarette and then shrugging. “Quite a bit.” He flicks the ash from his cigarette, rolling his thumb and forefinger together. “Beautiful day,” he says, and Tom feels stupid when his immediate reply is, “Quite a bit.”

“Do you have another one?” Tom asks. “One of those—” He makes a feeble gesture to indicate Chris’ cigarette and Chris raises his eyebrows in surprise. He nods, rifling through his front pocket so he could roll one for Tom by hand. Tom watches him, still standing, a hand on his hip as he waits, the intricacies of rolling a cigarette a mystery Chris slowly reveals. It feels intimate, watching him. Chris’ hands are smeared with dirt in the knuckles, but his nails, cut short, are relatively clean. His arms, Tom notices not for the first time, are covered in a film of dark blond hair. At his feet seat a pair of work gloves and some gardening tools.

Tom keeps himself from tapping his foot impatiently though the urge to do so is overwhelming. Something about Chris these days always sets him on edge; he feels closer to the tipping point every day, feels awkward and big-boned, his skin too tight on his body whenever he watches him from his window.

Chris hands Tom the cigarette, standing to his full height. Tom flicks his gaze to Chris’ face as soon as their fingers brush, but darts it away a second later when Chris’ own lifts to meet it. He wills himself not to blush and focuses on the creases in Chris’ shirt, the dark brown coffee stain in the corner of his collar.

Tom catches a whiff of the loamy scent of his clothes when Chris leans in to light the cigarette. Tom keeps his head down and blows smoke into Chris’ face. Chris steps away, batting a hand through the air, grimacing.

“I heard a rumor,” Tom says instead of apologizing. “Father says you’ve talked to him about your plans. You’re studying to become a doctor. Another six years? You must love the student life. Congratulations.”

Chris nods just once. Tom doesn’t miss the tightness in the corners of his lips, or the way he takes a hungry drag of his cigarette. Tom’s father had subsidized Chris’ education after Mr Hemsworth died while in his employ, moved by a sense of duty and guilt. He had paid for grammar school, and Tom’s father gave Chris a generous monthly stipend after Chris had won a scholarship to Cambridge. Chris hardly touched the stipend, Tom knew, because he still felt like an outsider in Tom’s family even after all these years.

“I promised to pay him back,” Chris replies evenly. “We had an agreement.”

“You know that’s not what I meant—” Chris turns away before Tom can say anything else, picking up his gloves and grabbing his tools from the ground: a trowel and spade. He starts to walk away but Tom follows him, hot on his heels, unable to help or stop himself. The grass is prickly under his bare feet and he can feel his toes dampen with dirt and dew. Tom feels furious, at himself, and at Chris.

“Well, at least it’s better than wanting to become an actor,” he goes on, desperate. “I bet my father is so proud.”

Chris doesn’t reply, but spares him a look over his shoulder, cutting and cold. Tom’s mouth can’t move fast enough to apologize; around Chris he always feels like he’s running out of air, bungling up every opportunity for reconciliation. He tends to say the wrong things. And his timing, it’s almost always off.

“Where did you learn how to roll a cigarette?” he asks instead because it’s easier for him to divert the subject than dwell on the way Chris’ entire expression has suddenly closed off.

Chris doesn’t miss a beat. “The same place you learned how to read Chaucer and Shakespeare and speak French, I imagine.”

“I hardly ever see you there,” Tom says petulantly. “I hadn’t even known you’d be coming back for the summer. I had to ask your mother.”

Chris stops briefly to face him. “I don’t think your new chums would take kindly to someone like me,” he says. “If you’re asking about why I’ve opted to stay out of your way.”

Tom huffs, a swell of defensive pride ballooning in his chest. He doesn’t know whom he feels protective of: Chris or his alleged ‘chums’. Or why he shrinks under Chris’ scrutiny, like a butterfly pinned on a corkboard. “What on earth does that mean?”

“We’re not seven years old anymore, Tom,” Chris says in exasperation. The implication hurts him. Chris acts as if he’s grown out of their friendship, like it had been nothing more than a childhood fancy, a phase he’d neatly shed. He’d taught Tom how to climb trees and swear and spit, how to talk to girls and tell which ones would give him the time of day.

Chris had swum with him, a few times, naked in the lake behind his parents’ cottage, their bodies shimmering and pale as fish as they took turns swinging on a rope over the water; he’d crawled into Tom’s bed the night of his father’s funeral, holding Tom as Tom cried and mourned Chris’ loss for him. Tom still remembered the smell of him: the earthy richness of his skin, the wild tang of sweat and green things. The rough texture of Chris’ shirt under his cheek which he’d soaked with his tears. The reliable shape of his hands on his ribs.

When they were both admitted to Cambridge, Chris shook his hand and congratulated him, didn’t embrace him as Tom had been anticipating. He had fantasies of the two of them living together: listening to nothing but opera and jazz, getting into hair-tearing heated debates about politics and literature, heading to the cinema on the weekends and drinking the night away in pubs, eating brunch in any number of quaint cafés strewn across London – all the clichés, the two of them inseparable. But no such thing happened.

Tom had left a week early to settle into the flat his father had chosen for him – claiming student dormitories were dreadful – and he remembers leaning out the window of the car to glimpse Chris standing there on the terrace, an immovable speck that grew smaller and smaller as the car accelerated and pulled out of the gated driveway.

What Tom has been missing is this: the warmth of Chris’ company and the tender quality of his generous touches. They’d grown up together and he had assumed their friendship would carry into adulthood. He felt the loss of Chris’ friendship, his affection, most keenly, and it was akin to losing a limb, sometimes he fooled himself into believing it was still there.

Chris finishes his cigarette. When they come upon the fountain, he tosses it into the water and it floats on the surface among the decorative lily pads, ugly and out of place. Tom stares at it, then at Chris, seized by shock and anger. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he hisses and marches towards the fountain, leaning over the water to scoop out the cigarette. His own he stubs on the stone wall and puts away for a moment. He has to push the sleeve of his shirt farther up his arm to reach for Chris’ cigarette. It drifts just barely out of his reach, towards the center of the water, bobbing like an unmoored paper ship, stubborn as its owner.

“Tom,” Chris sighs, but there’s a laugh to his voice. “Tom, let me do it.”

Tom glares at him and Chris stands back. The water is only four feet deep and Tom makes his decision on impulse. He wades through the water, his trousers weighing down his movements and grabs the cigarette in a cupped hand. He’s soaking, only parts of his shirt left untouched, when he climbs out of the fountain. He feels his clothes meld into his skin and tries not to squirm. It’s almost soothing; the water had been cooler than he’d anticipated. He shivers as a breeze prickles the back of his neck.

Chris is staring at him, silent. His mouth is half open but he doesn’t speak. Neither does he blink until Tom starts to move, clomping over to him to smack him on the chest with his cigarette, crushing it in his palm and the immoveable bulk of Chris’ chest.

“ _Tu es un idiot_ ,” Tom says to him fiercely, rolling every word perfectly. “Here’s your cigarette.”

Chris says nothing, and Tom walks, unseeingly into the opposite direction of house.

“Tom,” Chris says behind him. “Tom, I’m –”

Tom doesn’t listen; he breaks into a jog. Another impulse: to run from Chris. This is easier than confrontation. He’s angry, and he can’t pinpoint why. He hears Chris behind him in hot pursuit and starts to run, passing through the rusted iron gate and loping into the field where the grass has grown long and unchecked, bleached near-white by the sun. Pale tassels of wheat nod in the wind and he can hear the distant cawing of birds high above him like laugher.

Chris caches up to him eventually, grabbing him by the arm and spinning him around. “I made you angry,” he observes. “Why are you running from me? I’m trying to apologize.”

Tom tries to shrug off his grip but Chris doesn’t let him; his fingers dig into the meat of Tom’s arm, not hard enough to bruise, but squeezing it to the point of discomfort, testament to his strength; he’s stronger than Tom and bigger; he can overpower him easily, hurt him. Tom doesn’t know him anymore to properly gauge whether or not he will.

Tom stares at the coffee stain on Chris’ collar and tips up his chin. “Do it then,” he says. When Chris looks at him questioningly, eyebrows furrowed, he says, “Apologize.”

“If I’d known you were going to react like this I wouldn’t have thrown my cigarette into the water,” Chris says. But he lets Tom go, gives him a wide berth.

Tom feels the old familiar spike of irritation rising to the fore. “I think you’re missing the point of this entirely.”

“Am I?” Chris glances down at Tom’s lack of shoes. He shakes his head but his eyes are smiling. “Look, you’ve blistered your feet running around with no shoes on,” he says, like Tom is a child that needed admonishment.

“I don’t care about my feet,” Tom hisses.

“No,” Chris agrees. “I suppose not.”

Silence for a moment. Chris opens his mouth then closes it and Tom turns on his heel and stomps away. The grass brushes his arms; yellow stalks peek between sheaths of vibrant green, rustled by the wind. He pushes past them, and the hot earth crumbles under his itching feet. The wind blows through the long grass and it sounds like the tinkling of running water, soft and soothing.

Chris reaches out for him, one strong arm wrapped around Tom’s waist, pulling him back so his wide chest is pressed against Tom’s spine. Tom elbows him in surprise, seizing up, but Chris takes this in stride without so much as a groan. He tugs Tom even closer, flush against his own body. Chris buries his nose into the curls at Tom’s nape and his stubble is a bristly rasp against the soft skin there, making Tom shiver.

“I’m sorry,” Chris whispers, lips moving across Tom’s neck. Tom can picture him closing his eyes, his face pinched in distress. Chris winds his other arm around Tom’s waist, squeezing him. “I’m sorry.”

A flush slowly works its way from Tom’s neck to his face, creeping up into his hairline. He wonders if it’s Chris’ heartbeat that he’s hearing or his own. Chris holds him and Tom allows it, at least for a little while. The sky above them burns blue, the light almost blinding that Tom has to shut his eyes. He listens to the whirr of insects around them, the wind in the tall yellow grass; a farm truck rumbles past on the dirt road.

Chris’ warm breaths are steady, measured. He feels like they are children again, playing hide and seek, and Chris has found him where he’s hidden and caught him before he could run, shrieking and laughing, his arms flung tight around Tom’s waist as he lifts him, kicking, off the ground. This is familiar, safe, so he allows it, though a part of him knows that is no longer the truth. They’re older now, changed, and something about Chris touch stirs a flutter of want in him.

Then Chris kisses the side of Tom’s neck. Tom panics, wrenching himself free and spinning around to take a swing at Chris’ face. The blow lands square on his jaw, making Chris stagger. There doesn’t seem to be any blood, but the damage is no less severe: a blow to Chris’ pride.

“Oh god,” Tom says. “Oh, god, Chris!” He cups Chris’ jaw, and almost flinches when Chris scowls at him, but he perseveres and runs the pad of his thumb across the skin, as if the gesture could easily erase his mistake. He feels confused by his own behavior. He likes Chris’s touches, but hates the unfamiliar way his body seems to respond.

Chris sighs in defeat, and says nothing, closing his eyes. He’s in need of a bit of a shave; his facial hair is on its way to a full beard but Tom thinks he looks no less handsome.

“Does it hurt?” Tom says.

Chris gives him a look, snorting. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

“You took me by surprise, that’s all,” Tom says softly, biting his lip. But he doesn’t apologize. He looks away, embarrassed, touches his neck, the skin still prickling, still damp from Chris’ open-mouthed kiss. Or maybe it’s his own sweat; maybe the heat has made him imagine things. Maybe Chris hadn’t meant to kiss him, only to embrace him.

He glances up at Chris when he feels Chris’ hand on his wrist, his fingers tracing Tom’s knuckles, as if seeking permission. Chris tugs Tom’s hand and brings it up to his lips, and without breaking eye contact, kisses the open palm. From that point on, there is no mistaking it: the cool intent in Chris’ eyes, the sharp determined tilt of his lips.

Tom watches it unfold with an almost detached curiosity. His heart beats faster and faster in his ribs, nervousness and anticipation warring with each other as he tries to project a calm he doesn’t feel. Chris wraps his other hand around the back of Tom’s neck and pulls him forward till their noses bump. He sucks in a breath like he’s steeling himself for what he’s about to do. Tom doesn’t make it easy for him, turning away and giving Chris his cheek instead of his lips. But then Chris rubs his thumb across Tom’s jaw and tips his chin up, and Tom is surprised enough by the tenderness in the gesture that he looks up at Chris.

Chris leans down to kiss him, soft and seeking. Hardly any tongue but his lips are chapped and warm, pleasant enough. Tom lets out a gasp as Chris’ kisses turn long and hard and hungry, his desperation making Tom feel light headed more than the lack of air. When he breaks away, they’re both panting a little, wide-eyed and unable to tear their gazes from each other. Tom has never been kissed like that before, within an inch of his life, like he was something obsessively coveted, and he wonders if it’s another thing Chris has picked up from Cambridge.

“How long have you felt this way?” Tom asks, swiping his tongue over his lip. There’s no word to describe what Chris’ kiss had tasted like. Tom just knows he wants to do that again, the way he wants Chris’ big calloused hands to work their way under his shirt and unmake him. His skin heats up from the thought of it and he shivers under Chris’ openly hungry gaze.

“For as long as I can remember,” Chris says. It sounds like a confession, the truth. He pulls Tom to him, groaning as their foreheads touch. “This is why I had stayed away from you. Do you understand?” And he kisses him again, imploringly, tipping Tom’s head back so he could explore his mouth with his lewd and dirty tongue. “This— I want you. _I want you_.”

“How do you want me?” Tom asks, and his voice shakes when Chris looks at him. He imagines it himself, wondering if he could somehow read Chris’ mind: their bodies moving together in synchronized rhythm, Tom underneath the hull of Chris’ body, his ankles anchored high above Chris’ broad shoulders, behind his head – his body open and vulnerable, thighs made slick by lavender oil. He can almost feel the sweat that binds their skin together, the necessary roughness of Chris’ hands pinning his wrists to the ground. Tom knows how it’s done – he’s not ignorant – but he blushes in shame, anyway, thinking about the many other ways he can let himself be taken, standing up or on all fours like a dog, his body making its hunger known.

“I want you in all the ways there possibly are,” Chris says without artifice.

Tom crumples the front of Chris’ shirt in a fist and lets himself be dragged down to the ground. He feels mad and desperate the way he has been all summer, the months of pent up misery running him ragged like the heat.

When he opens his eyes Chris has lain him down carefully on the grass, his arms braced on either side of Tom’s head to support his weight. Above them the sky is bright, but the shade Chris’ shadow casts above him makes it easier to see. He wants his wits about him but his thoughts lose their articulation when Chris runs the tip of a finger down the side of his neck. His touch makes Tom’s toes and fingers curl, makes his tongue loosen inside his mouth.

Chris hovers over him, body bowed, and kisses him till he parts his lips. He touches their tongues together, and sucks Tom’s bottom lip between his teeth. His other hand snakes between them, undoing the buttons of Tom’s shirt with a clumsy haste. Chris looks at him for a moment before pushing the material aside as easily. His eyes roam every inch of skin revealed before he bends down to latch his mouth onto Tom’s collarbone, sucking a bruise there, moving even lower as his hands drift up Tom’s sides. He swipes his tongue across the valley of sweat between Tom’s chest, and Tom arches up, lets out a cry.

And then Chris unclasps the button of Tom’s trousers, yanking it down roughly. Tom breathes through his mouth, panting, the hard outline of his cock impossible to hide how. He wants this, but Chris’ hunger terrifies him, taking away everything and conceding nothing. Chris palms him through his underwear, encouraged by the hitching of his breath. He squeezes harder, dragging the heel of his hand up so he can close his fingers around the wet head of Tom’s cock, seeping precome through the cotton. It’s embarrassing, how his body betrays him, but more embarrassing still is the way Chris devours him with his gaze.

Chris pulls the material down, over his knees, down to his ankles, leaning back to free Tom’s legs. Tom is naked now, on the ground, save for his shirt left partway open and the dirt on his feet. He wants Chris to fuck him, take him apart, but he’s afraid of the consequences, of the liberties Chris may take.

Chris leans down to kiss him but Tom stops him with a hand on his chest. “Don’t— don't touch me.” He grabs Chris’ thick wrist before his hand descends Tom’s spread legs. “I forbid you to touch me.”

Chris’ nostrils flare. He looks betrayed but then he blinks and his face is once again a cool mask. “Then I won’t,” he says. “I’ll use my tongue to taste you.”

Tom puts up a half hearted struggle as Chris maneuvers him around, bends him nearly in half with each ankle secured in a strong grip. His desire clouds his thinking, makes his movements sluggish. He can kick Chris in the jaw but he doesn’t. Chris bends down and licks a hot stripe across Tom’s stomach, barely missing the curve of his cock, to lap at his sac. He groans as if Tom’s squeak of indignation pleases him. Then as if that isn’t enough, he spreads Tom’s legs apart, bringing his hands down under the sweaty underside of Tom’s knees so he could see Tom’s hole.

Chris holds him there, open and on display only for him, and Tom shivers under the scrutiny, his cock leaking copious drops of precome. He digs his fingers into the packed dirt, gasps when Chris lets one ankle go.

Tom can’t even bring himself to use it to his advantage, letting Chris hold up his other leg and feel out his hole with his tongue. He flushes, his skin rising in gooseflesh despite the heat. He wonders what he tastes like to Chris because he seems to enjoy himself, groaning as he buries his face between Tom’s spread legs.

This is the most intimate thing he’s ever done with Chris, more so than the late night embraces when they were children, or the naked swimming, or the time Chris had pushed him up against a tree and threatened to toss him into the lake if he didn’t stop teasing him.

“Do you touch yourself here?” Chris’ hands dip even lower to spread him open with his thumbs. Maybe he’s learned this too, in Cambridge; he seems to know what to do to drive Tom mad, sucking the soft skin of his thighs before nosing his warm sac, extending his tongue to trace the rim of Tom’s hole. Tom feels like he’s being eaten, with Chris’ tongue and fingers working in tandem to unmake him. He feels desperate, delirious, with Chris’ stubble scratching his thighs, and Chris’ large calloused hands kneading his arse, spreading him, flushed and trembling, bullying his body till it gives in to Chris’ questing tongue.

“Do you finger yourself?” Chris asks, flicking his tongue over the pucker. His chin is wet with spit, the bristles of his stubble glistening. “Have you ever—”

Tom rests his foot against Chris’ chest to give him a slight push. “I’m not a pervert,” he hisses, the words spilling out of his mouth in a trembling rush as Chris grabs him by the hips and covers his body with his own. They kiss again, Tom rubbing himself shamelessly against Chris’ front, making a mess of the both of them. _Do you finger yourself?_ He’s never – but oh, how he wants Chris to teach him.

“Fortunately for you,” Chris growls between their bodies, their mouths, “I am. I’m a bad person.”

“I’m beginning to see that.”

Chris lets out a laugh. It’s all the warning he gives before helps himself once more to Tom’s hole, fucking him with his tongue seated so deep Tom’s back arches off the ground, his toes pointed up and curling. His vision swims: sky, yellow grass, the shape of Chris’ head moving busily between his open legs and Tom yelps when he feels the stinging brand of Chris’ hand smacking his arse. Chris only stops to suck on his middle finger, coating it generously with his spit before he once again feels around for Tom’s hole.

“Relax, little darling,” he whispers, pressing a tiny kiss to the inside of Tom’s ankle. Tom only barely resists the urge to kick his handsome face as Chris rubs the pad of his finger against Tom’s perineum, then around the tight pink skin of his hole. He presses in shallowly, and Tom whimpers as his back stiffens. It doesn’t hurt but neither does it feel good.

Chris soothes the discomfort away with kisses to his ankle, his knee, until his finger is fully seated inside and he finally starts to move, creating a shallow rhythm that make the stubborn knot of resistance give.

And Tom begins to pant, sweat dripping into his eyes as Chris curls his finger and fucks him with it. The sensation of being filled is still new to him and strange. He feels humiliated with Chris’ eyes intently fixed on him, on where his finger disappears inside Tom’s body in smooth and even strokes. It makes Tom’s cock hard, this humiliation.

It makes him feel vulnerable. Being spread open for Chris to feast his eyes on, like a sacrifice. He wants Chris’ tongue again inside him, and also his finger, wants Chris to take him into his mouth and swallow him and make him feel good.

Tom whimpers when Chris finds what he’s looking for, the place that doesn’t let him stay quiet. “Oh, oh god,” Tom moans, cock spitting out precome. “Oh god, oh hell.”

“I’ve imagined you like this before,” Chris confesses with a low growl. “I’ve imagined you with your legs spread wide and impaled on my cock.”

Tom whimpers again, lips parting as he sucks in large gulplfuls of air. He can imagine it so clearly: Chris’ ruddy cock stretching him open. The burn of the first thrust, Chris’ cock the biggest he will ever take, the first. Even now when Chris pushes in a second finger, there’s no resistance, and Tom’s face heats up, his own greed shaming him.

“You promised not to touch me,” Tom says, clenching his eye shut, squirming around Chris’ fingers with a downward roll of his hips. They barely scratch the itch inside him, but they’re close, so close.

“I didn't say where,” Chris says.

Tom blinks his eyes open to glare at him.

“Now come on, touch your cock,” Chris goads. “Make yourself come. You look like you're about to. Is it because of my fingers? Do you want more? Or maybe you want something bigger? Like my cock.”

Tom bucks his hips, whining. He tries not to think about it; he’s so hard he’s about to come. Where had Chris learned to talk like that? Is it another affectation?

“You asked me how long I’ve felt like this,” Chris says. “I’ve wanted to fuck you since grammar school, when we were both little boys and you still let me sleep in your bed. I’ve always wanted you, Tom. And I want you still. When we were younger, I had fantasies wherein I took you away from your family, married you and made you my wife. It was foolish, but I was ten years old and you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

“Now you know why I stayed away.” Chris pushes his fingers in deep, and Tom’s cock responds, beading thickly at the slit.

“If I fucked you now, would you forgive me?” The lidded eyes, the sly smile – suddenly Tom realizes with startling clarity what they’re doing, in a desolate field with no one but each other as witness.

Chris’ smile is irreverent, and it looks wrong on him, ugly. It galls Tom to think that Chris believes his slights are easily forgiven, that the grief he’d caused Tom by affecting his distance could be shrugged off and swept under a rug by this gesture of affection. Tom kicks at Chris, pushes away his roving hands and grabs his trousers. Suddenly, he hates him with a fury that makes tears prick at his eyes.

“Tom – I was just teasing – Tom!”

Tom doesn’t look at him, doesn’t dare to. He wades through the tall grass until the familiar rusted arch of the side gate looms into view.

The wide open space, the distance between everything, is dizzying and he stumbles a few times as he runs, panting and gagging on air, home. He takes the stairs two at a time, his feet leaving mud on the steps, locks his bedroom door behind him and all but flings himself at his bed. His heart thuds in his ears. He wants to cry but the shame and arousal overrides the misery.

Tom yanks his trousers off, kicking his ankles free, propping one leg up on the bed as he takes himself in hand and feels around below his balls; he touches a finger to his hole, still slightly damp with Chris’ spit, and imagines himself being fucked into the ground, Chris relentless in his rhythm, destructive and wild. He seats a finger inside himself, his middle finger, just like Chris had, and begins to fuck himself, press in deep to the knuckle. He thinks about Chris’ smirk and whimpers. He stripes his cock with his rough palm.

Tom comes with a low groan, his body shaking from the aftershocks, come pooling across his stomach. He doesn’t know whom he hates more at the moment: himself or Chris. There’s a tap on the window: one, two, three. Tom wipes his stomach with the tail of his shirt and goes to check it, but it’s only the wind rattling the pane.


	2. chris

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Chris takes the long route home. He walks under the searing heat, following the dirt path that winds around the field, just a little ways off the main road, serving his penance through the discomfort.

He sweats through his shirt. He can’t recall the summers here being so unbearable, the inactivity oppressive like the heat.

The sun slants in his eyes and insects drone from the long grasses hemming the side of the road. He’s deep in thought, his head bowed low, a hand in his pocket when a car putters to a stop alongside him and Mr Hiddleston’s head leans out the passenger side of the car. Chris hasn’t seen him in months, when the man had visited Tom in Cambridge and paid Chris a visit too, to discuss the terms of his education.

Chris resists the urge to run, certain that his guilt is writ all over his face; he’d let Tom go without apologizing, had let lust cloud his thinking. He’d wanted him too much that he’d botched up any attempt at reconciliation, and now he’s left with less than what he had started with. He clenches his fist in his pocket, puts on his widest most charming smile.

Mr Hiddleston responds in kind, oblivious to his turmoil. “Dinner tonight, Christopher,” he says with a friendly wink. “I’m hoping you could make it. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. 8’oclock?”

Chris nods without thinking, struck mute. He can never say no to Mr Hiddleston; he owes him too much. “8 o’clock,” he repeats with a nod, just as Mr Hiddleston grins and rolls the window shut. He watches the car ascend the road sloping uphill and nearly sags on his knees in relief when the car makes a left turn and disappears. He realizes too late what he’d just agreed to: seeing Tom again after what he’d done. He grimaces, kicks feebly at the dirt under his boot and sends dust and gravel skittering away.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


His mother is in the kitchen when he arrives, making a late lunch with the castaways from the Hidlestons' kitchen: cold cuts, some bread, a pitcher of cold orange juice that makes Chris mouth water when the sharp tang of fruit hits his nose. He kisses her cheek by the door once it’s offered to him, grabs a hunk of bread and cheese from the table and takes a hungry bite. His mother tousles his hair fondly, opening the window to let the air in.

The house is dank, old but not in disrepair, with clean wooden floorboards and an earthy smell that filled the room. The windows have no curtains, just tall rows of potted plants which Chris’ mother has left on a ledge to fringe the glass.

“You look tired,” he tells her. She sighs and pulls out a chair in front of him, fanning herself with a folded up newspaper. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of silver I’ve polished today. Mr Hiddleston is coming home apparently. We’ve been up to our elbows preparing the evening meal.”

“I saw him up on the road,” Chris says, snagging a piece of ham and folding it into his mouth. “He invited me to dinner.”

Chris’ mother looks surprised, her bushy eyelashes disappearing into her hairline. “Are you going?”

Chris shrugs. “Well, I can hardly say no to the man,” he says. He doesn’t need to say the rest: they owe him their loyalty.

She nods as he stands and gathers cheese and ham on a plate, hugging her sideways with his mouth full and his teeth still gripping the hard bread between his jaws. “You’re nothing like your father,” she tells him almost sadly.

Chris lingers in the doorway, his throat filling up with emotion. He knows what she means: neither of his parents had had any formal education, and here he is chasing a medical degree. He’s not ashamed of his past or his history, but sometimes he wishes he could rewrite some of it, erasing his father’s death and improving some aspect of their lives.

They’re working class, not poor, but sometimes he suspects his mother would’ve been happier had Chris simply accepted the status quo and contented himself with work as a landscape gardener. She’s been quiet all week since he’d been home from Cambridge, regarding him like a stranger, speaking to him in code. He wants to tell her that he’s still her little boy, that having ambition and pursuing it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. He’s doing this, in part, for her, wanting her to have a good life. He knows how her hands shake sometimes when she’s doing the washing up, how deeply she sleeps in her favourite chair after six straight hours on her feet, tending to the Hiddleston household. She’s strong, just like Chris, made of sterner stuff, but she’s not going to live forever.

“That’s because I’m all yours,” he says wryly, winking at her. “I’ll think about you when I see my face in the silver tonight.”

She laughs and flicks a crumb of cheese at him.

Chris brings his food up to his room, uses one foot to ease the door open. He hadn’t had the chance to clean since he’d been away: his suitcase is still left unpacked at the foot of his bed, his writing desk crowded with ashtrays and sheaves of paper, pencils and pens scattered across the scarred surface from the tipped-over tin can he used to hold them; books lean precariously against each other on the window ledge: _A Treatise of Human Nature, The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Hamlet_ and _Gray’s Anatomy_. A lazy fly buzzes its way through the open window. Chris bats it away and shuts the window, then opens it again to let it free. His reading chair creaks when he deposits his weight in it. The cushion sags under his arse and some of the stuffing has bled out of the rips in the armrests but he finds he rather likes it that way, that it gives the chair, and his room, some character.

Chris kicks off his boots, stretches his toes, props his legs on the side of his unmade bed.

He eats messily with his hands, thinking about nothing in particular, staring at the column of light on the ceiling. Downstairs he can hear his mother’s off-key singing as she clears the table and gets ready to leave for work. He tries not to let his mind wander, but eventually, without his consent, his thoughts drift to Tom: he hadn’t meant to kiss him, or tell him how much he’d wanted him. But the truth had spilled out of him before he could contain it, kept so long that it had festered and grown into a mean ugly thing. Stupid, he knew, he should’ve said something, but he wanted to keep Tom safe from his perversions. They’d known each other for a long time, raised alongside each other like brothers: Tom in his father’s house with its elaborate French windows, Chris in his mother’s cottage with the yard crowded with washing, just a stone’s throw away.

Chris doesn’t even know what he finds attractive about him; his was a rather angular boyish face, the forehead high and creased, the eyebrows pinched in perpetual worry. But his mouth was soft and kind like his eyes and his skin glowed with the luster of the carefully tended. There was a wounded quality that hung about him, that Chris wished he could rewrite like his stories.

He’d always seen himself as Tom’s protector, having never had a sibling of his own. He can still remember the long summers before Cambridge, the games they played in the woods as children: playing as pirates and singing bawdy songs, climbing trees and fishing; tennis on the lawn with Tom’s sisters as spectators, drinking iced water under the shade; the tail end of June with its cold rain as they hurried under the trees with their soggy paper kites; the trips to London whenever Chris had been allowed to come along by proxy, his first time at a cinema with Tom’s hand wrapped tight around his as the orchestra began to play, the seats plush and furnished red like a jeweler’s felt. Most of his childhood memories are tied to Tom in some way and he’d allowed himself, for some time, the idle fantasy of the intensity of their friendship continuing into adulthood. He’d wanted Tom to be in his life forever, but there were some things he began to realize growing up: that his attachment to him was unhealthy, and touching him so freely had its consequences.

A knock on the door startles Chris out of his thoughts. His mother leans against the open doorway, wiping her hands on her skirts. “I’ve finished ironing your shirts. Do you want me to do your shoes as well?”

Chris shakes his head. “Thank you, I’ll do them myself. Are you heading out now?” She nods, her smile barely reaching her eyes and turns. He refrains from calling out to her as she disappears down the hall, her footsteps heavy on the stairs.

Chris tiptoes around the grubby mess of clothes on the floor to shut the door and lock it. Dinner isn’t in another six hours, but he’s already dreading the potential awkwardness of sitting at the same table as Tom. Sooner or later, he’ll have to talk to him and he’d rather mend the bridges now before they had a chance to fully burn.

Chris takes out his typewriter, buried underneath a pile of reading in a musty box that used to house old photographs. It’s heavy and dusty, a gift from Tom’s father when he’d turned eighteen, the creamy ivory keys worn from repeated use. He decides he’ll write Tom a letter because some things are better written down than said. Chris clears a wide berth on his desk, shuffling papers aside to make room for the typewriter. He rolls the platen knob until the smooth paper becomes visible, flexing his fingers as he prepares to write. All that blank space makes him queasy.

The last thing he wants is to sound desperate and earnest, but he feels like some semblance of honesty is required in order to appeal to Tom’s sympathy. He drums his fingers against the edge of his desk, tilting back his seat, wondering what on earth Tom could be doing and if he’d told anyone about what Chris had done. The light in the room is hazy, soft like gauze but the heat seeps into the very floorboards, steaming the room.

Chris sweats in his shirt profusely, so he opens all the windows and doffs his shirt, sitting at his desk in his singlet and trousers. Then he decides a much needed break is due and rolls himself a cigarette, lighting up the first of many in the warm afternoon. He reads his first draft, standing by the window with a full view of the weedy front yard:

_Dearest Tom,_

  


_I thought I should write to apologize for my clumsy and inconsiderate behavior._

  


The rest of the letter rambles, referencing past mistakes: how Chris had never visited Tom’s flat like he’d promised, though he’d wanted to, several times. How he’d even stood in the street for the better part of an hour until rain had caught up to him and leeched his courage, making him believe it had to have been a sign.

He tears the paper to shreds.

Chris starts again but the words don’t come. None of it sounds right to him: too needy or else too self-aware. He shreds a sheet of paper in half and scrubs his face in frustration, pressing the heel of his hands into his eye sockets. In his mind’s eye he can still see Tom with perfect clarity like he was right in front of him, flush against the unforgiving grass, his body lean and long. One arm flung over his face as he hides his blush, his breath is shallow, his cock a hard red curve against the flat plane of his belly. He’d tasted heady, Chris remembers, like something Chris could get used to, his kisses hesitant and clumsy but increasing in desperation. Chris wants to kiss him again, wrap that sweet mouth of his around his cock.

Chris pulls the paper from the typewriter and balls it into a fist, tossing it into the steadily growing pile behind him. He walks to the gramophone and slides a record on the turntable – Puccini’s _La bohème_ –, lowering the needle and adjusting it over the rim of the record. _O Soave Fanciulla_ fills the room, haunting and dreamy and Chris seats himself in his reading chair once more with his head tipped back to the sun. The air outside brings with it the dust of the dirt road, along with the bitter scent of smoke rising from the nearby farmstead. Beyond that the field is filled with countryside noise: birds, insects, frogs all calling to each other.

Chris faces his typewriter with renewed vigor, an impish smile on his face as the keys clack in rhythm under his fingers. He sucks in his cigarette and folds the paper in two, leaving it on his desk before stretching his legs. He grabs a towel from behind the door and heads to the bathroom where he fills the tub with fresh water. Then he strips and folds his clothes on the floor, slipping into the tub, careful not to splash too much. He can almost feel his pores open up, the grime washed completely off his skin. He buries his head underwater, then surfaces with a gasp, feeling a lot less hot-blooded than he did this morning.

Chris smokes in the bath for about half an hour, staring at the screened skylight, light filtering through the trees above and dappling the water with a strange evanescent glow. He shuts his eyes and chuckles, calling the last letter to mind:

  


__

_In my dreams I kiss your cock, your sweet wet cock. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long._

  


He’ll never send it of course, but knowing it exists emboldens him. He’d told Tom he was a pervert, and perhaps this was, in part, true. But that doesn’t make the confession any less reverent: he dreams of Tom more than he doesn’t.

He writes his final letter in longhand, opting to give it a more personal touch, sitting in his towel with his hands wrinkled like prunes. He leaves that one on top of his battered copy of _Critique of Pure Reason,_ also folded in two. Then he dresses for dinner, even though he’s a few hours early: polishing his brogues with a rag and laying out his suit. His bowtie sits crooked at his neck — tying it was a trick he never seemed to be able to master despite the many dinner parties he’d been forced to attend in the Hiddleston main house. He checks his reflection in the mirror in his wardrobe, realizes he’d forgotten to shave again and combs his hair back with his fingers. He doesn’t like his face, already deeply lined in the forehead despite his youth; he’d always thought his jaw was too wide, that his eyes were too small for his face, his eyelashes too long.

But it’ll do, he thinks, and slides the letter across the desk to hold up against the light: seals the letter in a white unmarked envelope. Then he closes his bedroom door and says goodbye to his mother – dozing in her favourite chair and snoring soundly – heading out into the bright clear light of the afternoon, the sun warm now instead of unforgiving, though that could’ve been easily a trick of the mind.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s Emma Chris sees: lying on the grass on her front as she pores over a book, her legs swing back and forth like a pendulum. Tom is nowhere to be seen and out of habit, Chris darts a nervous look at his window, visible from his vantage point. But there’s no one there and the curtains barely stir. He smiles as he walks towards Emma who sits up immediately, brushing her skirt over her ankles. “Are you going to dinner tonight? Papa wants you there.”

“I am,” Chris confirms, grinning.

Emma smiles back, ducking her head and blushing. “I suppose that’s why you’re wearing a bowtie. Would you like me to—”

“Emma,” Chris says, cutting her off. Her eyes widen so he softens his voice. “I have a favor to ask you. Do you think you’re up for it?”

A beat and then Emma nods eagerly, pushing her hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. Her eyes resemble Tom’s but her nose is wider, stronger, like her father’s. She’s thirteen and Chris wonders if her crush on him would ever fade away. He feels like he’s betrayed her, lusting after her brother in secret.

Chris produces the envelope from his breast pocket and presents it to her with a flourish. “I need this delivered to Tom. Can you do that for me? I’d hand it over myself but we haven’t been on speaking terms lately.”

Emma doesn’t blink as Chris hands her the envelope. She takes it with such reverence that Chris feels he’s made the right choice, twirling it in her nimble hands as she nods again. “All right,” she says and smiles at him. She starts gathering her things, climbing to her feet. Her knees are stained with mud and grass, like the front of her dress, and she smiles at Chris again before running back to the house. Chris rises from his crouch and watches her, then heads into the house himself through the side door that leads to the kitchen. His mother’s friends – the very people who’d raised him in his father’s absence – are congregated around their workstations, too busy to mind his presence: rolling dough, preparing the stew, polishing the cutlery and silverware. The smell of roasted meats and spices assault his nose when he steps inside, the heat from the stoves hitting him like a wall of plastic sheeting. He starts to sweat, and has to mop up his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.

“You going to dinner then?” asks Mr Emmet from where he’s peeling potatoes by the bagful.

Chris blushes and laughs, shrugging out of his dinner jacket and hanging it on a coat rack. He’s always loved helping out in the kitchen because the feeling of not-belonging never went away, despite Mr Hiddleston’s attempts to make him feel part of the family. He’s spent most of his childhood in the main house, knows in vivid detail its many secret rooms, but he’s not of their ilk, and never will be and knows he has no place in the Hiddleston home anymore than a mongrel at the table. His real place, for now, where he felt no pretense was needed, were the kitchens where his mother held domain, where her friends talked about simple things without politics or affectation.

In Cambridge, when he and Tom crossed paths, he often wondered how Tom spoke of him to others – that’s our cleaning lady’s son, don’t look now– and whether or not he was ashamed of their association. He liked to refer to Tom as the son of his patron, his childhood friend, but when asked why he didn’t approach him to say hello he simply shrugged and said nothing, going on his way. It was easier to pretend they were different people when they had no friends in common, no shared special interest. Tom had his soirees and his theater chums, while Chris had a scholarship to maintain and a short-lived penchant for rowing. As children they had each other, content in the knowledge they’d always have each other’s backs, but now they had _this_ : a distance too great to mend, the fragile string that tied them together stretched to the limit, frayed.

“You’ll get your suit dirty, love!” says Mrs Collingwood, the cook, dousing flour in his direction. “Off with you.”

Chris neatly avoids her aim, laughing and stumbling out of the door with his jacket in hand, spat back into the late afternoon where the sky is the color of deepening dusk. The light carries a strange winy quality, molten gold drenching grass and stone in soft dreamy hues, lengthening Chris’ shadow. Chris ambles into the garden that he helps maintain during the short weeks he is home from university and seats himself on the stone bench admiring everything as if seeing it for the first time: the luxuriant rows of plants and flowers in full bloom, the Rowan tree heavy with fruit. He remembers Tom reading to him on this very bench, Chris scrunched up uncomfortably with his head pillowed in Tom’s lap. The way Tom had rolled his words, the voices he’d made up for the characters. The memory makes him smile wryly.

He doesn’t know how he realizes it, so lost in his musings, but when he blinks his eyes open he _knows_ he’s sent the wrong letter. The first draft he’d placed on top of his desk, next to the typewriter, and he remembers slipping that into the envelope, not the final draft he’d painstakingly written by hand. He makes a mad dash into the main house, through the kitchen and into the foyer where he catches sight of Tom descending the stairs, already in his suit. His hair is neat, his curls tamed down. His cheeks look flushed and he clutches a rectangle of paper in his right hand – the letter, still folded in two.

Chris finds himself out of breath. From the running, he thinks, and clutches the wall for support.

“It was a mistake,” he says. Tom stops in his tracks, on the seventh step. “You weren’t meant to read that.”

Tom keeps his face carefully blank. “I wasn’t?”

Chris shakes his head. “No, I had another letter. Less…”

“Perverse?” Tom supplies. There’s a twitchy smile in the corners of his lips, but Chris can’t be too certain.

“More formal,” Chris corrects. Then his shoulders sag and he buries his face in his hands, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. He flushes; he can feel his ears prickling in humiliation. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I hadn’t meant to—”

He puts his hands down when he hears Tom walk past him, his long-striding gait tense and hurried. Chris is not sure if he’s meant to follow but that’s what he does, shutting the door behind him just as Tom flicks the lamp on to illuminate the gloom. This is his father’s study: furnished exorbitantly with mahogany shelves and heavy curtains imported from Spain. A portrait of the family hangs above the mantel.

Tom walks around the desk, resting his weight on his palms. He looks wonderful bathed in the luminous quality of the light, his cheeks softer and less angular, his lips small and pursed.

But Chris can’t read him, not anymore, and doesn’t know how Tom plans to steer this forthcoming confrontation.

“What would you have told me in that other letter?” Tom asks, cutting straight to the heart of it. His voice shakes a little and Chris is glad because he feels quite unmoored himself.

He knows the words by heart; he’s written the letter twice on his typewriter before transposing them to paper. “I apologized, _profusely,_ ” he says, but Tom interrupts him, raising a hand.

“Tell me,” he says. “What did the letter say?”

Chris blinks at him, drawing his gaze down to the closed furl of Tom’s lips, then back up again to his eyes.

He recites the words without breaking stride, without tearing his gaze away:

  


_Dearest Tom,_

_You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, and I don’t think I can blame the heat. Will you forgive me?_

  


When he finishes, slightly winded, Tom nods curtly then turns away. “I’ve never done anything like that before. This afternoon when you –” he stops and shakes his head before turning to look at Chris again. “You said you’ve felt like that for a long time. Were you telling the truth?”

“Of course I was,” Chris breathes. “How could I lie about something like that?”

Tom doesn’t smile, doesn’t look Chris in the eye. “How did you know?”

“I suppose I’ve always known,” Chris says, shrugging helplessly. “I never wanted to be away from you.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Tom says.

Chris sighs, pocketing his hands to curb his instincts: to reach out for Tom. He feels so far away from him but that’s probably his own doing: he’s tried too hard to get Tom to hate him and now has succeeded. “I didn’t want to corrupt you with my… my feelings,” he finishes. “I thought that by staying away from you they would just dissipate over time.”

“Well,” Tom raises his chin. “Have they?”

“No,” Chris says with a bitter laugh. “I’m afraid not. If anything I think they’ve become more intense. I feel more for you than I did before when I was ten, eleven.”

Tom says nothing, keeping his lips pursed in thought. Chris braves the distance and crowds him against the desk; he doesn’t touch him but it’s a near thing, his hands free from his pockets, hanging limply at his sides. They stand so close he can smell hints of Tom’s cologne, the dewy fresh scent of his skin weakening his resolve. He lifts a hand to cup Tom’s face and Tom doesn’t flinch, but steps forward into him and tilts his mouth up to kiss him. He grasps the back of Chris’ neck as Chris deepens the kiss.

The kiss is short and tentative, nothing more than a passing glance of breath, their tongues flickering out to touch. Tom slides his hands up the satiny lapels of Chris’ dinner jacket, his fingers coming to rest on the ends of Chris’ bowtie. He gives it a gentle tug, smiling wryly. “You never did learn how to tie these things,” he says and Chris kisses him again, overcome with sudden hunger, seating Tom on the desk with his hands under his thighs. It’s nothing like their kiss from this afternoon, vicious and almost primal, because this time Tom responds to him in kind: his movements slow and languid, his body warm and pliant, his breath stuttering out of him each time Chris noses the soft spot behind his ear.

Tom undoes Chris’ belt between them, tugs Chris’ shirt from his trousers and slips his hand inside his unbuttoned waist. Chris nearly jumps at the cool touch, the sure sting of Tom’s hand wrapping itself around his cock. He fills up Tom’s grip almost immediately, bucking his hips into Tom’s fist in between breathless biting kisses. “Tom,” he groans. “ _Fuck_.”

“That’s the idea,” Tom whispers into his ear. “I want you to.”

Chris pulls back to look at him. Tom’s lips are kiss-swollen and parted and his bowtie hangs slightly askew. Chris has seen him naked this afternoon, spread open and shaking, and seen the dark brown pebble of his nipples, peaking into hard little nubs. He presses his face against Tom’s chest and feels around for them, fusing his mouth over Tom’s left nipple through the starchy fabric of his shirt. He sucks until he can feel it stiffen under his tongue, drenching Tom’s shirt with his spit, making him moan, deliberate with his use of teeth. Tom slides his jacket off his own shoulders with haste, tossing it on the floor so Chris could unbutton his shirt and continue mouthing at his chest. Chris lifts Tom’s undershirt to his collar and tastes the sweat of his skin and shivers, laves his tongue over the sharp dip of Tom’s collarbone tasting the familiar tang of his cologne.

“Here?” Chris asks. “Do you want me to – _here_?”

“Yes,” Tom pants. His strokes losing their rhythm and he lets Chris go completely with a choked cry, kissing him again, wet and open-mouthed.

“You’ll let me?” Chris sweeps his hands up Tom’s ribs, running them across his sides, his thumbs rubbing the edges of his nipples. Tom nearly bites him for it, whining against his mouth, their teeth clacking together when Chris’ surges forward to shove him further back onto the desk. They nearly knock over the expensive ivory lamp but Tom manages to catch it just in time, righting it on the desk. They share a look and giggle like schoolchildren until Tom rubs himself against Chris’ hip, letting his other needs be known.

“I want you to,” Tom stumbles a little at the words, flushing to his ears, bringing his teeth to nip gently at Chris’ earlobe. His hair scratches Chris’ cheek, the smell of which fills him with a sudden wave of tenderness. He knows this smell. He closes his eyes and breathes it in to bottle the scent it to memory.

“I want you to fuck me,” Tom rasps against his ear.

Chris blushes, strangely, at Tom’s use of the word. He nods and fumbles for the button of Tom’s trousers. “Yes,” he promises. “Yes, I’m going to.” Then he takes Tom in hand, squeezing the solid heft of his cock and thumbing the damp spongy head. Tom gasps and lets out a pitiful moan, clinging against Chris’ shoulders as Chris strokes him till he’s hard and wet. Chris leans away and lets him go, lets Tom’s cock bob free between the open V of his trousers. His shirt hangs open, parted over his chest. Chris groans at the picture he makes and pulls him in for another kiss.

“We need oil,” he says into the space between their mouths.

Tom pushes him off gently and rummages through the drawers of his father’s desk. Chris catches the vial of oil and sets his jacket aside, hanging it on the back of a wooden chair. Tom watches him, eyes half-lidded now, and tugs him closer so he could unbutton his cufflinks, pushing his sleeves up his elbows and unknotting his tie. His hands wade underneath Chris’ shirt to squeeze and rub at his chest and stomach, his fingers skimming the sheen of sweat covering Chris’ back. Chris groans, reaches between them to unhook Tom’s trousers fully, letting them puddle at his feet, followed by the cotton of his underwear. He steps out of them, kicking them aside, looking up at Chris again for instruction.

“Turn around,” Chris grunts, running his nose across Tom’s cheek and whispering the comment. “Hands on the desk.”

Tom arches up into him and arranges himself the way Chris likes, facing the door as Chris wraps his arms around his waist and kisses the sweaty column of his neck. “God, I’ve waited so long for this,” Tom moans, trembling. Chris takes a moment to admire what’s presented to him: the tail of Tom’s shirt rumpled and covering his arse, his white knuckled grip on his father’s desk. His legs are long and sturdy like a runner’s, dusted with fine blond hair. Chris kneels behind him, and lifts the fabric over the small of Tom’s back, bunching it in a fist.

“You look beautiful,” he says, meaning it. “Now lift your hips.”

Tom moans and obeys, bending forward, his weight supported by his arms. Chris slides a finger between the valley of his arse, and doesn’t miss the way Tom’s whole body starts to shake. He parts Tom’s knees and spreads him with greedy hands, watches the pink muscle of his hole clench in anticipation. He feels like a hungry dog, all dumb tongue and raw instinct, grunting and growling, with his hard cock leaking in his trousers.

Tom opens easily under his tongue, so eager and needy, trembling as he fights to move his hips and fuck himself down against Chris’ face.

Chris lick into him in broad, sloppy strokes, keeping Tom’s cheeks parted so he could taste him every time. He watches the pink pucker tighten when he lodges the tip of his tongue inside, when he rubs the pad of his finger against the muscle to test the give.

Above him, Tom whimpers, panting with an open mouth. His eyes are clenched shut, and his right hand has disappeared below his shirt, no doubt wrapped around his cock.

“None of that now,” Chris admonishes, giving his hole another tender lick. “I want you to come from this.”

“ _Chris_.”

Chris taps him on the arse cheek, hard enough to sting. Tom moans, body lurching forward in shock, but nods his head fiercely in acquiescence. He does what he’s told, releasing his cock after a leisurely squeeze and pressing his hand shakily back onto the desk, resting his forehead and breathing hard against the surface. Chris climbs back to his feet and rewards Tom by giving his arse a generous squeeze, feeling out his hole with the tip of his middle finger.

“You’re tight,” Chris observes. Tom’s shoulders shudder and sag beneath him as he lifts himself up on his elbows to glance up at Chris.

“I’ve never—”

“At all?”

Tom shakes his head, his face flushed.

Chris’ jaw tightens at the implication. He tips oil into Tom’s spread arse, keeping him parted with his thumb. Tom wriggles, shivering, and Chris tests the give of his hole with his thumb, coating his fingers with oil so he could easily slide them inside. He starts with one finger, the middle long and thick, easing its way with little to no resistance.

“Will it hurt?” Tom asks, his voice high and trembling.

“Not unless you relax,” Chris says, pressing in two now and curling them both.

Tom whimpers and squirms, bearing down on Chris’ fingers. His hole swallows Chris down to the knuckle. He bobs his hips, kneels one leg on the desk to give Chris’ fingers a better angle. Chris has never seen anything so lewd before in his life: Tom fucking himself on his fingers in slow, careful increments.

“I want it to hurt,” Tom confesses. “Make it hurt.”

Chris growls and bites down on Tom’s shoulder. “Do you now?” he says, freeing his cock, palming himself slick with the rest of the oil. He positions his cock flush against Tom’s hole, and guides the head inside till he’s fully encased. The way Tom’s body opens up beneath him makes him bite Tom on the shoulder again, leaving what Chris is certain is a painful bruise. But Tom seems to like it, reaching behind him to grasp Chris’ hip as Chris starts up a rhythm, one hand gripping his hip: stopping and starting in between pressing kisses to the sweat soaking Tom’s shoulder blades.

Chris thrusts into him, deep and rolling, and Tom cries out, his cock spurting drops of precome into his shirt. But otherwise the room is terribly silent, save for the noise of Chris’ grunts and Tom’s soft breathy whimpers. Chris can hear every single inhale, every creak they make on the floorboard. The wet slap of their bodies fills the room, each pounding thrust displacing Tom on the desk.

Chris speeds up a little, shifts and shifts again, so deep inside Tom now that he can only wonder how _stretched_ and _open_ Tom must feel. He grabs Tom’s cock underneath his shirt to grasp the wetness at the head. He’s close, hard and hot in Chris’ palm, but Chris wants this to last, wants more, so he pulls out with a shudder and seats himself on the cushions. He pats his lap when Tom looks at him in confusion, his eyes misted over in tears, unable to move from his skewed position on his father’s desk.

Tom huffs when Chris pats his lap again. “Come here,” he beckons. “I want you to sit on me.” He pumps his cock and Tom blinks, his face twitching.

“You’re depraved,” Tom accuses, but he pads over to Chris to kiss him with a deft tongue. He swings a leg over Chris’ hip, leaning back so Chris could once again press the head of his cock to his hungry eager hole. Chris slides inside in one quick motion and they both groan, shaking, as Tom starts to rock his hips. Chris keeps his hands under Tom’s thighs as anchor while Tom holds onto his shoulders.

“I’m depraved?” Chris chuckles, closing his eyes when Tom runs his nose down his cheek. “You’re the one – you’re the one with my cock up your arse.”

Tom makes a _nghhh_ noise and cants his hips forward and back. Chris loves that Tom’s body is so honest: his cock flushed and angry and his balls so fat and full of come. And underneath that where their bodies are joined: his hole stretched around Chris’ thick cock, glistening with oil. Chris grabs his hips and starts fucking him, hard and fast and sloppy, groaning when Tom slams back to meet each and every one of his thrusts. They have enough sense to stay quiet, but it doesn’t stop Chris from wanting to make Tom scream, pounding into him as Tom spreads his legs wider and uses the balls of his feet to guide his movements.

“Do you think you can take it?” Chris asks, voice rough and low. “Do you think you can take my come?”

Tom whimpers, pumping his cock in time to the erratic rhythm of their hips, one arm hooked around Chris’ neck. Chris watches as his eyes close and his body tightens, his muscles spasming around Chris’ cock as he comes with a wet sob.

Tom slumps forward, tipping into him, his breathing warm in Chris’ ear. Chris is still hard and hasn’t come, so he maneuvers Tom around the cushions, leaning him against the armrest so he could take him by the ankles and _thrust_. He doesn’t last long, not with Tom looking so debauched, his skin flushed from the exertion, his body pliant and open. Tom lets out a ragged moan when Chris finishes, filling him with a hot river of come. He empties all of it inside him, breathing harshly, Tom sweaty and shaky underneath him, tugging him down for a blind kiss. His hips stutter, and he chases the remnants of his orgasm, with wide rolls of his hips that make Tom whimper and fist his shirt. When he pulls out, Tom sighs, his legs falling open at Chris’ sides, his hole flushed and gaping from the stretch it had endured.

Chris stills against him, gathering his breath, his wits. Tom thumbs his eyebrows, his hairline, and kisses his jaw.

“We still have dinner to attend,” Chris says, groaning. But he doesn’t let Tom go, his arms fastened securely around Tom’s waist, and neither does Tom make an effort to move.

“Wait,” Tom says. “Wait. Listen.”

Footsteps across the hall. Voices. Chris turns his gaze back to the door, glad he had remembered to lock it. Tom pushes him off him, loosening his legs from Chris’ hips. Chris lets him go and stretches on the opposite side of the seat, massaging a crick in his neck.

“I think we should dress,” Tom says, crawling across the floor to grab his trousers. Chris tries not to stare at Tom’s hole, at his come leaking out and dripping thickly down his pale thighs. He blushes when Tom catches him staring, rubs his neck, suddenly feeling bashful.

“I’ve ruined your suit,” he says, from a lack of a better thing to say.

Tom shrugs. “I have plenty of others. I can always change into a new one.” He pulls on his clothes but they look rumpled beyond repair, his white shirt missing a button, his collar crooked. Chris dresses reluctantly, buttoning up his trousers. When he finishes, they stand face to face, like strangers again, unseeing, which is why it surprises him when Tom cups his cheek, leaning up to kiss him, tugging on his lapels and leaving Chris with no other choice but to grab his hips.

Tom adjusts his bowtie and smoothes his hands down the front of Chris’ jacket, trying to undo every ruffle and crease. His face is flushed, his eyes fever-bright.

“I’ll see you later,” he says, but Chris grabs him by the wrist before he can make it to the door. He can hardly stop himself from reaching out, tugging Tom towards him as he kisses the side of his neck, squeezing him in a nearly painful embrace. “Is this all right?” he asks. “Is this allowed?”

“Yes,” Tom breathes, barely able to mask his amusement. “Yes, of course.” 

“Will you let me see you again?”

“At dinner,” Tom says, laughing now. “Chris!”

“No, I meant after,” Chris tells him. He’s deadly serious. It feels like an eternity that he waits for a response, Tom’s spine stiff against him before it sags in acquiescence.

Tom untangles himself from Chris’ grasp and brushes something from Chris’ shoulders, grooming him once more: hair, face, tie. His smile is small but reaches the corners of his eyes, his movements quick but no less tender. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, of course.”

When he leaves, Chris waits a beat before following him out the door.


End file.
